One of the most common methods of reducing the weight of vehicles and airplanes is to use parts made of lightweight alloys that provide higher strength and increased stiffness. Although these materials provide multiple advantages, they are generally difficult to shape and to join together.
Several different types of joining methods have been developed for joining such materials. For example, mechanical joints, such as rivets or clinch joints, are sometimes used to join lightweight alloys of dissimilar materials. However, the strength, durability, and corrosion resistance of such joints may not be the same as the properties of welds between the parts. To avoid this, methods have been developed for clinching the different alloys together. Clinching is a bulk-sheet metal-forming process aimed at joining metal sheets together without additional components, using special tools to plastically form an interlock between two or more sheets. Although clinching avoids the disadvantages of using mechanical joints, it cannot always be practically used as it is difficult to perform on materials that do not exhibit high degrees of ductility, are thin or have complex shapes. Moreover, the process of clinching is time consuming and often expensive.
Therefore, a need exists for providing an improved system of clinching alloys and other materials that is easy to use and can be performed on thin sheets and reduces time and expense.